


Another brother, another war

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Best Friends, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, Military Background, Military Backstory, Missing Scene, Mutant Powers, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24284887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: After serving two tours in Afghanistan, being basically bulletproof and having dodged death more times than he could feasibly count, John never would have expected that the sound of gunshots would have scared him so much.But when he turned around just in time to see Gus collapsing to the ground, face buried in the grass, eyes open and unseeing, fear was exactly what he felt. Fear and abstract horror.
Relationships: Augustus | Pulse & John Proudstar, Lorna Dane & Marcos Diaz & John Proudstar
Kudos: 2





	Another brother, another war

**Author's Note:**

> It's a shame that Gus had to die. I wish they could have brought him back to the Underground and fixed him and he could have been part of the team together. I think his powers are really cool and I wish we could have gotten to see more of him, and his relationship to John, because they were obviously close. IDK, but I hope you guys enjoy this because it was lots of fun x

After serving two tours in Afghanistan, being basically bulletproof and having dodged death more times than he could feasibly count, John never would have expected that the sound of gunshots would have scared him so much.

But when he turned around just in time to see Gus collapsing to the ground, face buried in the grass, eyes open and unseeing, fear was exactly what he felt. Fear and abstract horror.

He could still see the soldier who shot him, walking steadily towards the fence with his gun raised high. Slowly, spotlights were turning back on, and soldiers were yelling at each other. John forgot about the mission then- all he could think about was breaking every bone in that soldier's body and dragging Gus as far away as he could, dead-weight or not, anywhere would be better than here.

He hadn’t even realized that he was turning and running towards him until Marcos put a hand on his shoulder and pulled back as hard as he could. John was a very hard man to move at the best of times, but if his shoes hadn’t slipped in the mud, Marcos probably wouldn’t have even gotten his attention let alone turned him around. John was the only one who could survive getting shot by all those soldiers, and they all knew that he was more than willing to use that to his advantage.

Tessa was sobbing as they weaved through the trees, and John didn’t feel much better. All he could think about was how he left his best friend behind, left him to die, left him-

“We don’t even know if he’s dead.”

It took him a moment before he realized that it was him who said those words, and nobody answered him. Marcos was sending him worried looks. Tessa had stopped crying, though her eyes were wet. It took everything in John’s power not to turn around and go back, but even if Gus was still alive, even if they could have saved him, it was much too late now. They would be on him by now, dragging his motionless body back to the relocation centre like he was a discarded child's toy, back to the place he hated, back to the place John had already broken him out of once and promised him he would never return to.

When they made it back to the car waiting for them on the side of the road, he switched places with Tessa. He should have been driving, but he worried that if he got anywhere near something fragile, he would shatter it, and he didn't want that to happen to the steering wheel. Instead, he settled to fisting his hands in the fabric of the backseat, feeling the material tearing under his fingers like it wasn't there at all. Marcos kept sending him worried glances in the rearview mirror, but thankfully, he didn’t say anything to break the tense silence. 

All he could think about was how he had just left his best friend behind to die, left him to rot in the unforgiving clutches of Sentinel Services, whether he was dead or alive, they would still find a way to ruin him. Cut him open and see what made him tick, figure out his mutation the hard way, drag him through the depths of hell just to recreate what he was-

“I promised him I would never leave him behind,” John said, mostly to himself, but Marcos and Tessa had been listening closely the whole trip. “And I just let him there when it mattered most.”

“You didn’t do anything, John,” Marcos insisted. “ _We_ left him. Don’t put this on yourself.”

“Which one of us is the leader?”

Marcos didn’t reply, because there was nothing more to say. John was right, he was the leader, but it wasn’t like it was only John’s decision. If Marcos had let him go after him, no matter how bulletproof and indestructible he was, they would have wasted precious time and they would have been caught. Marco knew this. Tessa knew this. Deep down, John knew this too. But that didn’t mean that there was any way that Marcos could convince him of anything different, so he didn’t bother trying.

By the time they joined up at the rendezvous point where Lorna and Sonya were waiting with the get-away cars, John had destroyed the front seats with how hard he had been gripping the headrests, and the fabric was torn asunder, the metal bent and broken. The atmosphere had grown tenser the further away they got from the relocation centre when it should have been filled with joy and elation at a successful mission. But John’s mood was contagious, and nobody could possibly think about celebrating. Not that there was anything to celebrate, anyway. Sure, they had survived, but at what cost?

“What happened?” Lorna asked when they exited the car, rushing forward and wrapping her arms around Marcos’s waste. “You’re back earlier than we expected.”

Sonya looked over the group, and at John, who was the last to exit the car and slammed the door shut so hard that it buckled. “Where’s Elsa? And Randall? And the mutants you went there to rescue?”

“Elsa and Randall are dead,” Tessa said, and Sonya looked like she’d been slapped. “We didn’t even make it inside. We didn’t rescue any mutants.”

Lorna was watching John closely as he stared holes into the ground, and she slowly looked around as she realized that they were missing another member. “Where’s Pulse?”

Instead of answering, John straightened up and marched towards one of the waiting vehicles. “We need to move before they find us. Marcos, burn the car so we can’t be traced. We should split up transport so that we can bring both cars back to base, but nobody is alone if they’re followed.”

“John,” Lorna repeated. “Where’s Gus?”

“I’m pretty sure we had a full tank on these when we left,” John continued, ignoring her. “So that should be enough to get us back without stopping. The radios are charged and ready, so if we get into trouble, you can contact the rest of us.”

When it became clear that John wasn’t going to speak any more on the matter, Sonya and Lorna turned to Marcos and Tessa, all huddled together in the corner while they watched John do a quick once-over of the get-away cars. It was Marcos who spoke, voice muffled by Lorna’s hair. “Pulse is dead,” he said, and Lorna and Sonya exchanged a glance. They turned to John and observed him carefully as he listened for anyone approaching in the distance. “Their security was stronger than we were expecting, and as we tried to escape, he stayed behind to disable their weapons, but he wasn’t fast enough, and they shot him.”

“And you left him behind,” Lorna said. There was no judgement in her voice, just sad understanding.

“Yeah,” Marcos said. “We had to get out of there. We-”

They were interrupted by John coming around the corner sharply and charging towards one of the cars. “They’re coming. We have to move, right now.”

Hurriedly, they joined John by the cars, hating all the empty space in the backseats of the vans that had been chosen for all the mutants they were going to save, and Marcos and John hopped into one while Tessa and Sonya entered the other. Lorna hovered, unable to decide between the original arrangements or joining her best friends.

“Go with the girls, Lorna. They’ll need you,” John said. “Follow the plan.”

Reluctantly, Lorna slid into the backseat of the other car as the drivers keyed the ignition and the engines revved to life. Marcos reached out the window and set the first get-away car on fire as they passed by. They swerved out onto the road and were driving away from Gus and the detention centre and the oncoming cops before they knew it.

“John…” Marcos tried after they had travelled for some time in silence and had already split off from the ladies in the other car to throw off anyone who might be following them. 

But John wasn’t having any of it. “Just drive.”

Marcos obliged.

The headquarters was too quiet when they finally returned, too empty. It would usually be filled with cheers of celebration and Gus boasting about his achievements in particular, but now there was just… nothing. They had stocked up the fridge before they left, on Gus’s demands, ready to celebrate a job well done once they got back, but nobody felt like celebrating, and the drinks in the fridge remained untouched.

Marcos had tried to corner John at the car when they finally pulled up at the garage, but John didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, all he wanted to do was go back to his room and not leave again until he was needed. 

But that didn’t help, because he had shared a room with Gus in their little make-shift base camp, and the moment John walked through the threshold he was assaulted by the scent of Gus, his pepper scented cologne and his pomegranate shampoo and the familiar tingling-numbing sensation his mutation gave off even when his powers were dormant. He saw Gus in every corner- to his made yet messy bed, the slightly ruined magazines, the dog tags on the homemade nightstand. John resisted the urge to pick them up. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw flashes of a past Gus long ago, dressed in uniform, a gun resting in his arms, smiling and laughing and acting like they weren’t fighting for their lives. Wearing civilian clothes, wandering through the streets with his arm over John’s shoulder, cheering him on in the cage fights from the sidelines, grinning every time they left for a mission. It wasn’t the first time he had seen people he had lost. Back in Afghanistan, he watched people die every day and saw them not long after. Humans, mutants, it didn’t matter. He knew what was happening, but it after they had died, long after they had left the trenches whether it be back home or to an early didn’t matter. It somehow felt worse when it was Gus. 

John turned his back on Gus’s empty bed and left their shared bedroom for his office. 'Office' was a generous word, but it was the only place that was well and truly his and that didn’t smell of pepper and pomegranate and didn’t have after-images of his best friend blocking out his vision. The thought that he may have to get a new bedroom to escape the sight of Gus made him sick. 

Leaning back on his soiled desk chair, feet up on the improved table filled with documents and maps and blueprints, John felt his heart fill with dread. His hand had trailed upwards and his fingers involuntarily wrapped around the familiar dog tags that hung around his neck at all times, and he ran his thumbnail over the engraving of Gus’s, the words a permanent fixture in his mind, a pattern of letters he had memorized long ago in the trenches of Afghanistan. 

It was the first time all day that John let himself _feel_. Let himself feel the loss of his best friend, his brother, the first person he had cared about for so long. And now he was just gone, and he didn’t even have a body to bury. John didn’t even get to say goodbye. He had been so sure that Gus would make it back to them, to _him_ , that he didn’t even think that it might be the last time he ever spoke to him. He would have told him he loved him, to come home safe, that John would always be there. But he didn’t have that chance.

How was he supposed to live the rest of his life without his best friend beside him? The comedic relief to his seriousness, the light to his dark. How could he lead the Underground without his moral support behind him, the hand on his back pushing him forward? Yeah, he and Lorna built this place, but it was his job to lead. Gus had always been there for him. How could he continue without him?

It occurred to him that Gus didn’t have anything personal. Nothing that John could carry with him to remember him by. Yeah, John wore one of his dog-tags around his neck beside his own, and Gus had one of John’s hanging from the chain on his bedside table, but other than his relatively thin file, Gus didn’t have anything. He didn’t need anything. He didn’t want anything. But now he wished that Gus had been just a little sentimental, a material person, so he could have just a little something to remember his best friend by other than a file with his face and name and the same dog-tags he had worn for years.

Sighing, John reached for Gus’s file. He knew it off by heart anyway, considering it had been the exact same one as it had been in the military, the same as John’s. The sticker on the front of the manila folder had faded after all these years and was starting to peel up at the edges. He smiled as he was greeted by Gus’s familiar face on the inside, looking serious and stoic in uniform, and the second picture, much more recent than the first, had him looking happier with a twinkle in his eye and his wild hair needing a trim. Already, John missed him more than he could ever have thought, and it had only been a couple of hours. How the hell was he supposed to live the rest of his life without him if he couldn’t even go a couple of hours?

There was a gentle knock on the door, and John reluctantly looked up from Gus’s smiling face to see Lorna and Marcos standing expectantly. Lorna held two beers in her hands. “Can we come in?” She asked, voice soft and careful.

John shut the folder and tossed it on the table, where it skidded across the surface before it came to a stop against the flickering lamp. “I don’t think I have a choice in the matter, so sure, I suppose.”

Lorna placed the beer in front of him as she and Marcos took the seats on the opposite side of the desk. John looked at the beer before he pushed it away. Lorna frowned. “Look, man, I know you’re not doing too great, but you shouldn’t blame yourself for this,” Marcos’s voice was soothing and gentle, but John was almost overwhelmed by the smell of bourbon and smoke, iron and rain, and the mingling of them both. He couldn’t even concentrate with how strong it was, and he had to look away, the sensation stinging his eyes. “You know that it’s what Pulse would have wanted.”

“To be abandoned when he needed us the most?” John shot back. “Do be left in the hands of Sentinel Services, a group who hates and hunts down mutants, a group that Gus actively despised and feared, and letting them do god knows what with his body? And that’s just assuming that he died. Let’s _hope_ that he died. You _know_ what they’ll do to him if he was still alive when they caught him.”

“For us to get away,” Marcos continued gently. “For us not to be captured and suffer the same fate.”

“I could have gotten to him, you know,” John said, not looking at them. They were looking at him though, and he despised their scrutiny. “I could have gotten out of there with him before anyone even realized where we were. I could have carried him to the car, dead or alive, and we could have gotten out of there, together, as a family and as a team.”

“But he was dead, right?” Lorna asked. “The way Marcos described it, he was dead before he hit the ground. None of you should have gotten out of that alive, and I think it’s a miracle that the three of you did.”

John didn’t say anything, and looked away instead, arms crossed over his chest. “We should have taken his body.”

But Marcos was shaking his head. “They would have killed us, John. Or worse, they would have put a collar on us and dragged us to a Sentinel Services detention centre or testing facility and we never would have seen the light of day again. We couldn’t risk it.”

“I’m bulletproof,” John said. “You guys should have left, and I would have followed right behind you. I could have jumped the fence, crossed the lawn, killed the soldier, grabbed Gus, and followed you in the time it took for reinforcements to arrive.”

“Maybe, but maybe we would have lost you too, and the Underground would be without a leader, and we would be without our best friend,” Marcos said, and John didn’t reply.

Sighing, Lorna leant forward onto her arms and crossed them onto the table, her hair hanging over most of her face. “Look, John, I know you’re pretty beat up about this, but we need you to get your head in the game because we need you to lead this team.”

“ _Lorna_ ,” Marcos hissed sharply, horrified.

“No, listen,” Lorna said as John turned to look at her with narrowed eyes. “I know that this is killing you, John, but you can’t let it consume you. You have to keep moving, or you’re just going to fall back onto old habits, and we need you.”

“So you’re the only ones allowed to have feelings, right? I have to be the stoic, emotionless leader and act as nothing bothers me ever because that’s what's most beneficial to the team?” John snapped back. He was entirely done with this whole conversation, and all he wanted to do was leave and get some much-deserved peace and quiet. That’s why he had left his room and held up in here- so he wasn’t bombarded by images of Gus every two seconds.

He stood up in frustration, his chair falling back onto four legs and skidding away a little bit, as he made to leave the room. But he was stopped and yanked around sharply as Lorna’s power tugged and pulled at the metal bracelets around his wrists, his dog-tags gravitating in that direction, and he spun harshly around to face her as her tugging grew more and more insistent. “Lorna-”

“What I’m _saying_ ,” Lorna said, and her words were much gentler now, her eyes soft and sad, her fingers twitching as green matter swirled around her fingers and the air tasted like moments before a lightning stroke, like licking a magnet. “Is that whenever something like this happens, you tend to throw yourself into your work, and you do stupid and reckless things just to feel something else, something other than heartache and sorrow and pain. You just got clean, and you haven’t set foot in a fighting ring for almost a year. I know that Gus was your best friend and that you loved him very much, but you can’t let that happen again, John. because I wasn’t even there while you were going through it, but I know it was bad. I don’t ever want to see you go through that again. So what I’m saying, is that I would much rather see you putting all your energy into leading this team and planning our missions and avenging our fallen friends, than I would seeing you hurt yourself every night and beating yourself up about something you had no control over and can’t change. We can avenge him, John, but we can’t do shit without our leader. Like it or not, but we need you now more than ever, and I know that you’re hurting, more than the rest of us, but you can’t check out now. Not yet, OK? We need you. Gus needs you. We need to stop Sentenial Services once and for all, free as many mutants as we can. But we can’t do that without you, without our leader.”

“Without our best friend,” Marcos continued after Lorna’s admittedly powerful speech. “We’ll avenge him. We’ll do whatever you can. But don’t blame yourself for making sure the rest of us got out of there alive, because if you weren’t there, we probably wouldn't have made it very far.”

“Gus trusted you, John, otherwise he wouldn’t have followed you,” Lorna said. “We all trust you.”

“Even if it means your death?” John said, more emotional and choked up than he would admit. “Even if it means you end up with the same fate as Gus?”

“Even then,” Marcos said. “He knew what he was getting into when he agreed to join, and so do we. But we can’t do shit without you. So Lorna’s right. Get your head in the game, and when you’re ready, we’ll all be here, ready and waiting.”

Licking his lips, John nodded as Lorna finally let go of John’s bracelets. “Alright,” he said as he turned away. He was suddenly tired, bone-tired, so tired that every molecule in his body ached with the exhaustion. He just wanted to shut his eyes and never wake up again, not until the world ended. There was still so much he wanted to do, but he wasn’t stupid. “I uh… I should get some sleep.”

He didn’t miss the sad way Lorna and Marcos watched after him, but he tried his best to ignore it. 

That night, he barricaded the door with a chair to ensure that nobody would walk in on him, and he slept in Gus’s cot, leaving the pillows and blankets and magazines exactly where they had been discarded, and fell asleep with tears streaking down his face and Gus’s dog-tags that he plucked delicately from the bedside table in his fist, his last conscious thoughts about how much he missed his best friend, and his dreams filled with pink-tinted memories about Gus’s smiling face.

**Author's Note:**

> I also can't believe it but I had to think up scents for a lot of characters just for John's mutation? I've had to make a list just for future reference, so I'm posting them here in case anybody cares at all haha
> 
> Gus- pepper and pomegranate  
> Sonya- vanilla and coconut  
> Marcos- Smoke and bourbon  
> Lorna- metal/iron and fresh rain  
> Clarice- cinnamon and fresh fruit  
> Andy- fresh cut grass  
> Lauren- strawberries and cream  
> Caitlin- watermelons  
> Reed- Wood/ autumn scents
> 
> Also, in case it wasn't obvious, the 'pink-tinted dreams' was Sonya taking pity on him, so yeah, the dreams were her doing.


End file.
